1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13
Introduction: In many ways we have started this year as confused, divided, and unsettled as we ended last year. As we look to the future as a church, people, and country, we must embrace the language of love. We might think we live in a peculiar time of division and despair, but in 1 Corinthians, Paul encouraged a church in a similar situation. What we can learn from Paul is that it is easy to lose sight of what can guide us through our differences. We might have good intentions or accurate theology, but when we don’t have love, we miss out on everything that God intends for us. In this passage, in order to help us understand and apply the ways of love, not only does Paul define what love means, he also tells us what love is not.
The Photonegative Principle:
When you want to clearly describe/define something, it’s often helpful to both say what it is and what it isn’t. So after describing what love is, Paul tells us 7 things love is not. The first 5 things have to do with our relationship to ourselves, the last 2 with our relationship to others. The underlying principle here is that in order for our relationships with others to change, God must first change our relationship to our own selves. To grow in loving others well (looking outward), God must deal with our relationship to self (looking inward).
1. Where Love is Not
Last week, we saw how truth and love are necessary companions (v6). Here it is the opposite – wherever these 5 things are found, love is not there and in actuality cannot be there. Envy, boasting, arrogance, rudeness, and self-seeking are all distortions of our relationship to self, and are never companions to love. Let’s take a quick look at each of these:
Love does not Envy – Envy is all about self-obsession; it is when I cannot rejoice over or acknowledge the achievements, gifts, or success that others have. All that I see is what I lack or want and that I do not have. When we are obsessed with our own situation, we can’t love others.
Love does not Boast – Boasting is all about self-promotion: “Am I being recognized and applauded here? Am I being seen? Do I have the attention?” When we are trying to be seen and noticed, we cannot love others; the needs, voice, feelings of others will be pushed aside in favor of the self.
Love is not Arrogant – Arrogance is self-inflation, sometimes translated as “love is not puffed up”. If we have a higher view of ourselves than we do of others, we can’t really love them. Our help/actions will be controlling, patronizing, self-serving – like the Pharisee heart that prays “Thank you God that I am not like that”. We can only truly love someone when we stop looking down at them.
Love is not Rude – Rudeness is self-absorption; the Greek word has to do with acting in a way that dishonors/ disrespects others. It is manifested when we are careless about what/how we say and do things, willingly or unwillingly failing to account for how it will be received by the other person.
Love is not Self-Seeking – This term is a little more difficult to translate, but ultimately boils down to seeking our own things, our own way, and can be seen as the source of all of the above. This is also at the core of what the Bible calls sin.
It is important to keep in mind that it is not wrong seek things for ourselves, nor is it wrong to love ourselves, to want to have enough/be satisfied, to be seen/recognized, to be valued, to be important or be validated. But it is the essence of sin to seek them as our end goal and desire, as our own, rather than as a means to the end of loving God and loving others.
2. When Love is Not
Now let’s take a look from a slightly different perspective: when love is not in us, what do we see? Rarely will we be able to fully acknowledge our (insert here: envy, boasting, arrogance, rudeness) mentioned above. Perhaps the best way to tell is by examining our relationships and interactions with others – where the symptoms can be revealed, and where the final 2 things in Paul’s list come in to play. These two things are directly related to our interactions with others, as opposed to our interactions with our own hearts. What are the symptoms and signs?
Irritability – this has been called the ‘launching pad’ for anger. It is to have your insides coiled, ready to spring into anger. When you are irritable – snapping, short, quick to be angry, eager to be offended – the problem is usually less about the other person’s words/actions and more about the lack of love in our own hearts.
Resentfulness/Keeping a record of wrongs – this is much like keeping score, about how ‘I’m doing so much!’, ‘After all I’ve done for you’, ‘What have you done for me?’ It is when we keep scorecards – for our friends, family, spouse, co-workers, church members, really anybody we interact with.
With resentfulness in particular, we often keep it inside (check for me, minus for you), but when the dam breaks it often flows out all at once. Especially when we do something good for another person and we receive rudeness or – perhaps even worse, no acknowledgement at all – the seeds of resentment are born. This can even happen within the context of our relationship with God; as someone once said, “We cannot feel gratitude for life as a gift when we feel cheated out of the life we are trying to earn”.
3. How Does Love Get into Where It is Not
The pull of self to seek our own things is powerful… Who can let go of the need to be satisfied with who/what we are, what we have, and to be affirmed, seen, and validated? Who can let go of the demand to seek our own things? Who can let go enough to genuinely love others expecting (and requiring) nothing in return from them?
That’s a trick question – but here’s a better one: What has the power to deal w/ our envy, boasting, arrogance, rudeness, self-seeking, heal our bitterness and sweep away all our record keeping? How can we experience genuine change and growth? Only one thing is powerful enough. Love. What’s the cure for a self-centered heart? The Bible says that it is God’s love for us in Christ. Only God’s love has the power to get love where it isn’t – into us.
Irreligion will tell us “You need to love yourself more – (follow your heart, find your truth)”. Religion, on the other hand, will say, “You need to stop loving yourself so much! Don’t seek what you want; just do good, follow the rules and you will be rewarded!” But the Gospel says that Jesus loved you into being and gave himself for you in love. Thus, your life is not your own. Your salvation, your self, your things are not your own – it’s ALL undeserved grace. This alone can fill the heart with love so that we let go of seeking our own things and seek the good of others and the glory of God. The gospel is the power for a whole new relationship to self; it is a power to love as we have been loved.
REFLECT OR DISCUSS
What about the sermon most impacted you or left you with questions?
Do you agree that we must feel deal with our relationship to self in order to relate to others in love? If so, why do you think this is?
Of the first 5 things Paul says love is not, which do you most identify with in your own relationship to self?
In a self-obsessed, individualistic culture there is a enormous pull toward self, toward seeking things as “our own” (contra the fifth thing that Paul says is at the root of a love-less life). How is seeking our own things the root of sin (ie the what’s beneath our sinful actions)?
How do bitterness and resentment show up in your life? How do they reveal a self-oriented heart? What impact do these things have on your ability to love?
In his book on this passage, Lewis Smedes wrote. “We cannot feel gratitude for life as a gift when we feel cheated out of the life we are trying to earn”. Does this strike a nerve with you? your relationship with God?
How does the message that we the love of God can be ours eternally and unconditionally through Christ get love into our self-oriented, seeking hearts? How does it give us the security, the importance, the validation, the satisfaction we seek in our envy, boasting, rudeness? How truly believing we are loved by God heal our bitterness and resentment toward others?